THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL'S GROWING REACH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201670054-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2010
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: September 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201670054-8
STAT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
23 September 1985
THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL'S GROWING REACH
BY DALE NELSON ~?
WASHINGTON s AT
The National Secuurit Counc'1's behind-the-scenes
]maneuvering in the release o an American c ergyman e d hosta a in
Lebanon illustrates the operational side of the White House g
making body. policy
Organized nearly four decades ago primarily to process paperwork
for
the president, the staff of the little-known White House agency at
tames undertakes tasks that could be assi ned to the State and Defense
Oenartments or the Central me igence Agency.
The NSC staff is far less accountable to Congress and operates
outside of the public eye. But its influence inside the government
appears to be growing.
The council staff was especially active in the Middle East hostage
crisis arising from the hijacking of a TWA jetliner and in the
kidnapping of Americans in Lebanon.
Asked about the efforts to free the Rev. Benjamin Weir who was
released Sept. 14 _ and six other Americans who are still being held
hostage in Lebanon, a usually well-informed State Department official
pleaded ignorance.
It.' s an NSC_. operat,ion.._.bio one h_re.__knows...about it , ' ' said the
official, who spoke on condition he not be identified.
Some academic experts and aides from former administrations believe
the NSC staff has become too embroiled in day-to-day management in
recent years and should be attending more strictly to policy making,
leaving the operational details to the State and Defense Departments.
Others say the council staff is just doing what it has been doing
more or less steadily at least since the Kennedy administration, and
it's role is no cause for concern.
But observers in both camps agree that the staff of the council,
which was established in 1947, is doing much more than it did in its
early days under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.
The NSC's members are President Reagan, Vice President George Bush,
Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Secretary o e ense Caspar
Weinberger. CIA Director William J. Casey and Adm. i iam J. Crowe
Jr., chairman of the Joint Chief s of Staff are advisers.
The council is supposed to help the president formulate foreign and
military policy.
Robert C. McFarlane, the president's national security adviser,
heads the NSC staff but is not a member of the council. The staff
includes about 35 foreign policy experts and about 100 other employees
who provide administrative assistance and run the White House Situation
Room.
In recent months, in addition to the NSC staff's role in secret
to free the hostages, staff members who have made news have
included:
Lt. Col. Oliver North, an NSC staff aide who reportedly provided
some military advice to rebels fighting Nicaragua's leftist regime and
helped them raise money from outside sources.
Donald R. Fortier, deputy assistant to the president for national
security a?fairs, who was dispatched to India and Pakistan this month
along with Michael H. Armacost, undersecretary of state for political
affairs, to discuss nuclear proliferation and other problems.
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 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201670054-8
McFarlane, named along with White House Chief of Staff Donald T.
Regan to had a coordinating council preparing for the president's
summit meeting in Geneva on Nov. 19-20 with Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev.
Nicaragua, sharpest questions have been raised over North's role in STAT
. I think there is something new afoot if you are sending someone
down to Central America for God knows how many weeks on end to--
coordinate the activities of the Contras or liaison with them or things
like that, ' said Wil iam Quandt, a senior fellow at the Brookings
institution who was on the NSC staff during f he Carter a ministration.
That's the kind of stuff that in my day would have been done by
CIA,'' said Quandt. We would not have gotten involved in any way at
all in thin s like that.''
Burton M. Sapin, professor of international affairs at George
Washington University and a former State Department aide, said of
North's role, 'That struck me as inappropriate. It seems to me it is
not the sort of level at which people in that staff ought to be
working.''
The House and Senate intelligence committees and a House Foreign
despite assurances from McFarlane that no one on his sta every acted
as a go-between'' for private aid to the rebels. STAT
en, Liu n e.r er, R-Minn., Intelligence Committee chairman,
said the panel is `i ves i atin North s mission to see whether or not
ne stepped out of line and expects to make a pubic report, but he
believes that NSC staff members are for the most part performing
their traditional role.''
George A. Carver Jr., a former CIA official who is now a senior
fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Stu ies at
Georgetown University, said, The notion of quietly dispatching
someone from the white House staff to take care of something that a
president ... has considered delicate and would pre er no o have
ee is a precedent that has some three decades of tradition behind
it, so don't regard a repetition of it in a particular instance in
1985 to be necessarily Surprising or necessarily sinister.''
Si-verai scholars said NSC staff members had traditionally been
active in preparation for summit meetings and accompanied high-rte nking
government officials on missions abroad.
Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who was on the NSC staff under Henry Kissinger,
said he thought Fortier's trip to the Indian subcontinent was 11 very
much in the tradition of the NSC staff.''
And another former Kissinger NSC staffer, Morton Halperin, now
director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties
Union, said the council, rather than confining itself to policy making,
been an operating agency for a very long time; it's just gotten
bigger and more bureauc.ra.tic. ''
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201670054-8